Mr. Pádraig Dalton:

In legislation the confidentiality is guaranteed, even in this EU legislation. The data can only be used for statistical purposes and the data cannot be put into the public domain by any one of the other 27 member states that would lead to the identification of an individual company. That is written in the legislation but the risks can grow. For example, the CSO is currently the compiler of the export and import data. The CSO is in control of that data. It is easy for respondents to look at one organisation and say "We have seen the CSO in operation for many years, it has a strong track record on data confidentiality and we know as an organisation it will protect our data". The problem for us is that people will be getting the same guarantees from EUROSTAT and the other 27 member states but they do not have any relationship with those other 27 member states. The big concern is perception and whether companies perceive that there is any greater risk of a breach of confidentiality of their data.